“I suppose you have been patient today, Your Grace.”
“Very patient,” he said.
“It was nice of you to let the girls come with us.”
“Very nice,” he added, and threw a grin her way.
“I know they loved the ride, and they will enjoy the puppet show, too.”
She would never know how happy he had been to see Seaton and with his grandchildren. “I didn’t really mind,” he lied without really thinking about it.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” he said, and clicked the ribbons on the horses’ rumps to pick up their pace. “But I’m trying to be as nice today as you seem to think I’ve been.”
“That will make your mother very proud of you.”
“I doubt that, Louisa. I am her only child, but my mother has never favored me.”
“Did you just call me Louisa?”
“Yes, so what are you going to do about it, Miss Prim and Proper?”
“I’m going to say that is a terrible thing for you to say about your mother.”
He laughed. “Terrible, sad, and true. She would agree with me, I assure you. The duchess was an only child and never quite knew what to do with a child of her own, but the nurses, tutors, and governesses she hired did. Her Grace’s happiest day was when I was sent off to Eton to live.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, either.”
Bray looked over at Louisa’s wide eyes and realized how much he enjoyed being with her. “I’m sure it is, but don’t look so aghast. We get along well enough now that I’m grown.”
“What about your father? Was he the same way?”
Worse.
But he didn’t like to talk about his father. He didn’t even like to think about the man. “I saw very little of him when I was a child. My parents weren’t fond of each other, Miss Prim. Their purpose for getting married was to give my father an heir. After I was born and declared a healthy child, my mother moved into her own house. She and my father never lived together again.”
“Oh, I see,” she said softly. “That must have been a challenge for you.”
“Not really,” he said, watching for Standish and Miss Prim. “Boarding schools were always in my future. I adapted.”
“I suppose your life has been very different from mine.”
“I’m sure. For some reason, I envision you growing up with the whole family sitting around a dinner table, enjoying your food and your chatter. In the evenings, all of you probably played chess and cards, or listened to your father read to you by the light of a roaring fire.”
Her eyes brightened. “Yes, we did so often. Dinner and evenings were always family time. How did you know?”
I see it in all you say and do.
“My friend Harrison had family. He told me about his life.”
Bray looked away from her and clicked the ribbons again. A sudden longing for that elusive thing called “family life” gripped him tightly. He felt a lump in his throat and heaviness in his chest. He quickly shook the unwanted feelings away. Bray knew what family time was, though he’d never experienced it.
When he was a young boy, his meals were taken on a tray in his room with his nurse or governess. At boarding school, their food was served in a large hall at a long table with all the other boys who were just as lonely as he was. And as an adult, he never ate at home in the evening. He ate at one of his clubs. Bray’s father had invited him to dine with him one evening a couple of years before his death. Bray decided to be a good son that day and obliged him. The meal was so painfully long and quiet that repeating the occasion was never broached again by either of them. His mother was barely a little better, inviting him to dine with her only on Christmas day and Easter.
Family time was for vicars and the like, not for dukes, and it was best he not forget that.
“Look, Your Grace, to your right,” Miss Prim said. “There they are. See them, sitting on a blanket under that tree?”
